Chart of the Week: QE3’s Big Winners – Positioned for the Printing Press

While attention has focused on bond fund managers who benefited from the Fed’s much anticipated announcement of the next phase of Quantitative Easing (QE3) on Thursday September 13th, what happened with equity fund managers?

Using daily NAV data filtered through Prospector, MPI’s market surveillance application, we found that Ken Heebner’s much tested CGM Focus (CGMFX) had the highest return over the four day period of all 735 mutual funds in Lipper’s Large and Multi-Cap categories, posting a four day return of 6.9% (164% greater than the benchmark). Another household name, Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Fund (FAIRX), came in second with a gain of 5.71%.

What, you may be wondering, were the drivers of this prodigious outperformance? In the above chart, the x-axis measures Selection Return, the portion of the outperformance related to securities selection. Selection is unexplained by long-only perceived market factor exposures picked up by our patented model, Dynamic Style Analysis (DSA).[1] Both managers look to have made some savvy decisions for a scenario in which the markets would jump broadly. [2]

To test this further, we looked at beta (based on trailing 3-month daily data) to the S&P 500 of the fund universe. Interestingly, both Heebner and (particularly) Berkowitz do not have the highest beta of the bunch. There are plenty of funds with the same or higher beta, so beta is not the explanation the funds’ returns being 164% and 119% better than the market, respectively.

While both managers are known for their high conviction, highly concentrated portfolios (CGMFX recently reported 22 holdings, 70% in top 10) and significant turnover, these charts suggest the funds were right in the QE3 sweetspot. FAIRX’s real estate sector exposures (Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Investment & Services Index rose 9.9% in the period) likely helped its cause; additionally, our factor analysis shows FAIRX exposure to Real Estate rising since their last filings at the end of Q2. For Heebner, his reported negative exposure to cash and bullish commentary of late would suggest his market exposure and implied leverage (which our model also shows to have increased from last filings were made; see related footnote) put the wind at CGMFX’s back.

Rest assured, next time Mr. Bernanke fires up the press, we’ll be watching (as well as turning an eye to the past to see if there are any patterns in manager behavior around landmark monetary policy decisions of the past years).

[1] When we allow leverage in the model, it shows implied leverage of up to 50% for CGM Focus over these several days, or short-term daily beta of 1.5 – which is still not enough to explain a significant portion of return.

[2] MPI conducts performance-based analyses and, beyond any public information, does not claim to know or insinuate what the actual strategy, positions or holdings of the funds discussed are, nor are we commenting on the quality or merits of the strategies. This analysis is purely returns-based and does not reflect actual holdings. Deviations between our analysis and the actual holdings and/or management decisions made by funds are expected and inherent in any quantitative analysis. MPI makes no warranties or guarantees as to the accuracy of this statistical analysis, nor does it take any responsibility for investment decisions made by any parties based on this analysis.